‘Filmworker’: an engaging look at Stanley Kubrick’s right-hand man

Leon Vitali, a loyal lieutenant to film director Stanley Kubrick, reminisces about their work together in “Filmworker.”

Photo: Kino Lorber

“Filmworker,” an engaging documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s right-hand man, reveals as much about the reclusive film director as it does about the unsung hero who served at his beck and call.

Few, if any, filmmakers have been obsessive as Kubrick, but the master found a soul mate of an apprentice in the form of Leon Vitali, a Shakespearean-trained actor who gave up a thespian career to be a gofer — and eventually an indispensable assistant to a director who helmed such classics as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “A Clockwork Orange.”

The scraggly, skinny, soft-spoken Vitali, usually wearing a bandanna, takes us to the days when he first met Kubrick, who cast the then-TV actor as Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon.” During the project, for 30 takes in a row on one scene, Vitali gets struck — and hard — by Ryan O’Neal, and at other times, Kubrick changes long-rehearsed set pieces on a whim, a terror for most actors. But the obsessiveness on the set only drew the men closer.

For the next three decades, Vitali would do everything from casting roles, taking meticulous notes at all times of the day, logging screenings at venues around the world, or whatever else Kubrick needed. Getting sleep was not part of the deal, and it’s almost shocking to discover that Vitali had time to father children.

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“Filmworker” whisks us through the films on which the two men worked together — “Barry Lyndon,” “The Shining,” “Full Metal Jacket,” and “Eyes Wide Shut” — and we see Vitali getting just as obsessed as Kubrick. This pair was joined at the hip, and the film reveals a little-told, but important, slice of cinematic history.